Single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) have many interesting properties. In the past few years much interest has been generated in the medical field as to the possibility of using SWNTs or functionalized SWNTs to carry various payloads into organisms to produce biological effects. These payloads could be drugs, sensors, visualization aids, or combinations of these and more. The term “nanovector” has been coined to describe nanoscale particles used for such medicinal purposes. This is an area of rapidly growing research within our group (see Jared Lee Hudson’s thesis “Development of New Techniques for Functionalizing Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes for Composite and Biological Systems,” Rice University, 2006). Further results will be submitted for publication shortly.

Carbon nanotubes come in lots of diameters and types, and our goal was to take a pure sample of just one type and duplicate it in large quantities. This project, which was started by the late Rick Smalley, was intent on using nanotechnology to eventually solve the world’s energy problems; we knew we needed to find a way to make large quantities of pure nanotubes of a particular type in order to re-wire power grids and make electrical energy widely available for future needs. First discovered just 15 years ago, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are molecules of pure carbon with many unique properties. Smaller in diameter than a virus, nanotubes are about 100 times stronger than steel, weigh about one-sixth as much and are among the world’s best electrical conductors and semi-conductors. There are dozens of types of SWNTs, each with a characteristic atomic arrangement. These variations, though slight, can lead to drastically different properties: Some nanotubes are like metals, and others are semiconductors. While materials scientists are anxious to use SWNTs in everything from bacteria-sized computer chips to geostationary space elevators, most applications require pure compounds. Since all nanotube production methods, including the industrial-scale system Smalley invented in the 1990s, create a variety of 80-odd types, the challenge of making mass quantities of pure tubes, which Smalley referred to as “SWNT amplification” is one of the major, unachieved goals of nanoscience. Rick envisioned a revolutionary system like PCR (polymerase chain reaction), where very small samples could be exponentially amplified. We’re not there yet. Our demonstration involves single nanotubes, and our yields are still very low, but the amplified growth route is demonstrated. The nanotube seeds are about 200 nanometers long and one nanometer wide, length-to-diameter dimensions roughly equal to a 16-foot garden house. After cutting, the seeds underwent a series of chemical modifications. Bits of iron were attached at each end, and a polymer wrapper was added that allowed the seeds to stick to a smooth piece of silicon oxide. After burning away the polymer and impurities, the seeds were placed inside a pressure-controlled furnace filled with ethylene gas. With the iron acting as a catalyst, the seeds grew spontaneously from both ends, growing to more than 30 times their initial length; imagine that 16-foot water hose growing by more than 500 feet in just a few minutes. CNL’s team has yet to prove that the added growth has the same atomic architecture, known as “chirality,” of the seeds. However, the added growth had the same diameter as the original seed, which suggests that the methodology is successful. The publication of the work to date, funded by DARPA and the Dept. of Energy, is: Smalley, R. E.; Li, Y.; Moore, V. C.; Price, B. K.; Colorado, R., Jr., Schmidt, H. K.; Hauge, R. H.; Barron, A. R.; Tour, J. M. “Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Amplification: En Route to a Type-Specific Growth Mechanism,” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2006, 128, 15824-15829.

NanoKids Educational Outreach and SciJam/SciRave

This educational outreach project involved the synthesis of molecules that resemble people. Animated videos featuring these characters and others from the world of NanoPut have been used as educational tools for outreach projects intended to bring more people into the sciences. With SciRave/SciJam, the group seeks to demonstrate the utility of communal recreation, through the dancers and the observers, afforded by freely available packages through web-based downloads onto school-based or home computers. The SciRave/SciJam experience will be coupled through lyrics to key fundamentals that are learned during classroom study. Using a modern genre in which students are familiar, the long-regarded dovetailing of music and dance with education will be recreated. We expect to bring more students into the sciences by illustrating the fun and excitement of chemistry via animation and fun characters. Funding was provided by a SGER grant through the NSF, which has ended. Partial funding of this project was through the NSF and its funding of the CBEN here at Rice. Partial funding was also provided by NASA through the URETI TiiMS project. Additional funding has been provided by the NSF through a NIRT. The concept is Copyright James M. Tour 2006.

Project Summary: The primary objective of this project is to build surface-rolling nanomachines (called nanocars) that can convert optical energy inputs into controlled translational motion on a surface as monitored through single-molecule optical imaging techniques. This will be done by uniting the synthetic expertise of the PI, Tour, with the complementary optical imaging and measurement expertise of the co-PIs, Link and Marti, to propel the field of nanomachine development through simplified imaging and tracking methods. Imaging and tracking is currently the major slow step in nanomachine development and we hope to overcome this barrier through the combined expertise and approach here.

Intellectual Merit and Broader Impact: The movement of objects at the nano-level generally remains painstakingly difficult. Nanomanipulators are often 8–9 orders of magnitude larger than the individual nano-entity that they are intended to manipulate, and they only manipulate one nano-sized entity at a time. Following biology’s lead, there may be a better way to manipulate nano-sized objects by using machines that are close in size to the entities that need manipulation. For example, enzymes can be viewed as nature’s nanomachines as they control the transport and placement of molecular-sized entities for the construction of higher order structures. As nature often propels the nanoscale transporters using gross fields of influence, i.e. blood flow made possible by the heart, we too may find that gross fields, such as electric field gradients, are the optimal way to manipulate nano-sized cargo carriers. While we are investigating the use of passive transporters, we seek to study active transporters that have imbedded nanomotors that could be actuated by light. Therefore, transport of goods and materials between points is at the heart of all engineering and construction in real-world systems. Just as biological systems survive by nanometer-scale transport using molecular-sized entities, as we delve into the arena of the nano-sized world, it beckons that we learn to manipulate and transport nanometer-scale materials, and particularly upon surfaces under ambient conditions. Through this work, students and post doctoral associates will be trained in organic synthesis and the development of new imaging and tracking techniques, while propelling the burgeoning field of nanomachine development.

To promote science educational outreach efforts nationally and internationally through the NSF's broader educational goals of bringing new scientific concepts to the masses, we are using the Internet as a medium for the dissemination of Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and Guitar Hero (GH) packages that showcase grades 6-8 science curricula (Earth Science, Life Science and Physical Science, respectively) through communal games while particularly targeting broader ages 9-15, the precise age range where interest in science is often lost. Coordination with professionals in the Cognitive Science Department at Rice University will provide critical efficacy evaluations. Music and dance have been tools of learning since ancient times. In the more recent past, music was used for television-based education throughout the 1960s and 70s; science concepts were often translated by “singing to the bouncing ball,” thereby highlighting fundamental principles through lyrics. Here, fundamental science concepts from science text books are converted into modern lyrics that are then used to formulate DDR and GH music and step charts via StepMania and Jamming packages. We seek to demonstrate the utility of communal recreation, through the dancers and the observers (the latter can observe the scrolling lyrics), and afforded by freely available packages through web-based downloads onto school or home computers. The SciRave/SciJam experience will be coupled through lyrics to highlight fundamentals that are learned during classroom study. Using a modern genre in which students are familiar, the long-regarded dovetailing of music and dance with education will be recreated. The downloads can be accessed at www.scirave.org and this initial program will be augmented with the funds here. The proposed effort builds upon our successful NanoKids introduction of fundamental chemistry, physics, and biology concepts into middle schools that was done over a period of several years and used with over 15,000 children throughout the country that specifically targeted at-risk and underrepresented student groups. See: http://nanokids.rice.edu/.

Synthesis and Testing of New Flame Retardant Monomers and Polymer Additives

This project is concerned with the production of new flame retardant materials for use in commercial aircraft to give passengers of a survivable crash additional time to get out of the aircraft before they succumb to deadly gases and smoke. This project was funded by the Federal Aviation Administration and ended this year. Representative publications are: Morgan, A. B.; Jurs, J.; Stephenson, J.; Tour, J. M., “Flame Retardant Materials: Non-Halogenated Additives from Brominated Starting Materials and Inherently Low-Flammability Polymers,” in Encyclopedia of Chemical Processing, Lee, S., Ed.; Taylor & Francis, Inc; New York, 2005; pp.1879-1895 and Stephenson, J. J.; Jurs, J. L.; Tour, J. M. “Vinyl Bisphenol C for Flame Retardant Polymers,” Proceedings of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering, Long Beach 2004 Vol. 49.

Speaker. "NanoKids Educational Outreach Project." A Texas Leadership Conference Using Modeling, Visualization, and Data Management as Tools for Transferring Current Research into High School Mathematics and Science, Rice University. (9 March 2002)

Speaker and Participant. "Bible Study with 100 Rice students and 30 - 50 additional students from the Medical Center and University of Houston." West University Baptist Church, West University, Houston, Texas. (every Sunday except in June)

"Mortality and the Possibility of an After-life: Can a scientist believe in the after-life? Why the inadequacies of reductionist, materialistic science leave open the possibility.." Villafranche, Cap Estel, France. (June 12, 2017)